We Need More Pastors, Where Are They?

However, if you read the evangelicals at all, you will find that they’re noticing the increasing average age of pastors. This is a problem across the board in Christendom. If you want to make it out that it is PURELY a fundamentalist problem, you are welcome to do so, but it is a biased opinion. It is a problem all over.

Brandon wrote:

I am working hard in my state association right now to promote new planting and revitalization efforts. I’m not a bigoted outsider. I’m a committed insider.

Same here. The GARBC ruleth …

I’ve been on pulpit committees and searched for a pastoral position myself. We just hired another elder. I don’t see a supply problem, myself. However, I do see pastors looking for the old “full-time, solo guy” model and not being realistic about what churches can afford.

My quick thoughts:

If you can do anything other than the ministry, you should.

This is good advice. Disagree that it’s a bad thing to say.

You have to have a seminary education to go into ministry

You do. So, I disagree here, too.

We have not been producing enough young leaders to fill the gap and I think I know some of the reasons why.

If the article is speaking from an FBFI point of view, I believe that orbit has its own problems with younger men - some of which were mentioned (above). Outside the FBFI, I’m not so sure there is a systemic problem. The GARBC draws from a larger pool; their seminaries aren’t incubators. They draw from evangelical seminaries.

There are different kinds of fundamentalisms, each with different problems.

A lot of people were talking about this in 2017, after this Barna study came out. There are a lot of articles that commented on this, search under “aging pastors”

Here is a blog by a woman adjunct professor at TEDS, sounds like she’s been a pastor before (!). She comments on the same Barna study in addition to two others.

That is to support my point that it isn’t exclusively a fundamentalist problem.

As for seminary, if you can, you should do it. It isn’t a requirement. It provides tools you probably won’t get any other way, but I believe it is over-emphasized. (I hold an MDiv degree and am thankful for it.)

And the old saw about “If you can do anything other than the ministry, you should.” is just that, an old saw. I don’t believe it. I think a lot of men who should have considered the ministry took this line as a guide and went on to something else.

I love those guys! Are they perfect? No. Do they take strong positions I might not agree with all the time? Sure. Do I still respect them? Yes. Do I appreciate them? Yes.

I spoke to Dr. Bruce McAllister about this issue just a few days ago. Bruce worked for BJU 42 years and was in charge of the Ministerial Class and Church Relations for many of those years. He is very informed. He said there are about 1300 BJU grads currently pastoring churches. The majority of them are over 50. I’m 62 myself and have been pastoring for 41 years, six as a youth pastor and 35 as senior pastor at FBC Troy. The ministerial class at BJU is a fraction of what it was when I attended there. Bruce identified about 500 potential replacements. Bottom line is that Bruce is quite concerned. Our church has seen dozens of men called and trained for the pastorate. Many are senior pastors right now, and a good number of them are in the 20, 30, or 40 year age group. They are fundamental Baptist pastors, but they don’t have a great deal of interest (or angst) in the FBFI. Our new president in the FBFI is a very balanced guy. He is not a KJVO advocate nor a Calvinist basher. I think the FBFI has improved over the years, but its reputation has not fundamentally changed. I invited Mark Ward to be a speaker at the national meeting held at our church. I thought it was very important to have him come and speak. He hit the KJVO issue very hard, but I have not heard much from Mark since then. I like Mark and appreciate his new book a great deal. My son is 30 and has planted a church in England. He candidated at a Baptist church last Sunday in New England. We will know at the end of this week if he will be the senior pastor there. My son’s best friend, Mike, who is a member of our church, just took an assistant pastorate two months ago. Another school staff member at our Christian school and church just took an assistant pastorate about a month ago, and a current church member recently became the assistant pastor of a neighboring church this summer. All these men are in their late twenties or thirties. We have several men from our church or school at BJU studying for the ministry right now and 3 or 4 men studying at DBTS in the M.Div. program.

Pastoring requires many skills. I am sure they could find work in the secular realm if they had to. Pastors need an M.Div. or more today. They need to learn the biblical languages and solid biblical and systematic theology. Lowering the educational requirements will not help us in the long run. That education not only informs the mind and heart, but builds character as well. BJU is offering a very generous scholarship for Bible majors. Also, you can take two majors at the same time now. This will help.

Appreciate it. I do wonder about the enrollment numbers in pastoral programs. You mentioned BJU already. I wonder, too, about MBU and other places. They are growing, but is the pastoral program growing … or is it the other majors?

It seems likely that a position of stricter tribalism may limit your candidate pool, going forward.

Tyler,

I really love and appreciate MBU and Faith Baptist College among others. I have staff from both of those fine schools. Faith is growing and MBU is holding its own. Appreciate your ministry in the NW as a bi-vocational pastor. My son-in-law is involved as a pastor of a church restoration project—Gibralter Bible Baptist Church. My other son-in-law, Mark Mayer, is a surgeon who has just enrolled in seminary in order to prepare for the ministry. He will be bi-vocational. He wants to start a church in NW South Dakota. As I said before, my son, Luke, just finished a successful church-plant in England. Really appreciate and understand what you are doing personally in the ministry. Keep it up. Also, I loved your article on the social justice/gospel. I am working on an article regarding this topic for Frontline. Very helpful. Thank you.

MH

Tom Howard, I can’t say as I disagree with you, but your comment from 9pm yesterday is one of the most depressing things I’ve read lately. :^) I might also add that I’ve been in both companies and churches where the modus operandi was that the band played on while the ship sank, and of course the leadership was absolutely surprised to see the rats scurrying out.

Tyler also brings up a couple of points from the FBFI writer, and the one that really hits me is the notion that churches can skip training/seminary for pastoral candidates. Now we can quibble about how this training ought to occur—I am a big fan of suggesting pastors ought to do some of this training as part of the ordinary disciple making process—but Mike Harding also gets it right when he says that a pastor needs seminary level training, Biblical languages, and the like.

This is especially the case when we consider that teens are in what Dorothy Sayers would call the “pert” stage, and many/most of them tend to be really unimpressed with Bible college “this is how it works” answers. Being able to sit down and walk through the evidence is a huge deal. Being willing to do so is even bigger.

You must read a post carefully to rely intelligently, Don. The article was about the shortage of young leaders among independent Baptists. I commented that many of the young men raised in our churches and interested in ministry end up getting their seminary degrees outside of our immediate circles, and then, naturally, move into the ecclesiastical orbits connected to those schools. That’s it.

Anyway, I’ve got real ministry responsibilities to get back to now. But you keep fighting the good fight online!

Tyler also brings up a couple of points from the FBFI writer, and the one that really hits me is the notion that churches can skip training/seminary for pastoral candidates. Now we can quibble about how this training ought to occur—I am a big fan of suggesting pastors ought to do some of this training as part of the ordinary disciple making process—but Mike Harding also gets it right when he says that a pastor needs seminary level training, Biblical languages, and the like.

I’m almost ready to argue that seminary education (as in the formal send Billy to Baptist College for four / six / eight years of BA - MA - MDiv) is going to be unworkable in the future. Sure, places like BJU will always have a niche because they do other majors and degrees that supplement the school of religion/seminary, but I am not at all optimistic that this method of training men for ministry will be possible or sustainable 10 years from now. Whether it’s overt hostility to religion/Christians, the insane cost, the need to travel from home to the campus, or whatever…I just don’t see it.

I’m not sure what the solution is - there are some churches I know of that I’d be ok with pastors discipling new pastors, and some that I’d rather set fire to than allow it to happen (Hammond) - but we need to start coming up with answers because it’s a problem.

Anyone know how the church trained pastors in the former Soviet Union, or in places like China / North Korea? I think that’s where our future is headed.

As for the whole numbers of applicants/students being down across the board - of course it’s down. Who wants to be a pastor when they can make good money elsewhere, from a secular point of view? Who wants to stand athwart the world yelling repent or perish? Isn’t Biblical pastoring the same as Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 1:18-29?

[Jay]

Anyone know how the church trained pastors in the former Soviet Union, or in places like China / North Korea? I think that’s where our future is headed.

I agree with that pessimistic view.

Perhaps to stave it off, you might have to vote Trump??? (heh, heh)

This guy right here looks better every day.

[Don Johnson]

Jay wrote:

Anyone know how the church trained pastors in the former Soviet Union, or in places like China / North Korea? I think that’s where our future is headed.

I agree with that pessimistic view.

Perhaps to stave it off, you might have to vote Trump??? (heh, heh)

Don, sorry to let you know this, but writing in Trump is probably not going to get rid of Justin Trudeau. Just sayin’. :^) (Prime Minister Modi plans to retaliate )

Seriously, regarding Jay’s question about how pastoral training was done in the old Warsaw Pact countries, and how it is done in the house churches of China and elsewhere, if you cannot do classrooms and moving to your seminary, that means that training will be done in a more apprenticeship mold, 1:1 or 1:few, in such a way that tracing people will be harder. In other words, don’t just preach at people, make disciples.